Jonathan Dimbleby's "The Battle of the Atlantic" and the Battle of the River Plate

I am currently reading Jonathan Dimbleby's "The Battle of the Atlantic", and right from the start I had an uneasy feeling about his interpretation of events. Nothing definite, it would have taken days of research to confirm of refute the statements I thought looked suspect.

Anyway, I read away, until this morning (2016-08-31) I came to the part where he discusses the Battle of the River Plate. I stopped in my tracks at the statement:

Harwood's decision to attack the German battleship was audacious*: a broadside from the Graf Spee outweighed the combined fire-power of the three British cruises by a factor of more than two to one.                                                                                                         

The wording of this was something I did not like, first the ambiguity of language. The weight of a broadside is relatively unambiguous, but we are comparing it with the "combined fire-power" of Harwood's ships. I suppose he means the combined weight of their broadsides? If so the comparison is at least consistent (comparing like with sort of like), but is it true? What about the more appropriate weight of ordnance potentially deliverable per unit time? (I will pass over in silence -or not- my dislike of his using the term Battleship to describe GS, Panzerschiff, Pocket Battleship or Heavy Cruiser would have been acceptable, but not Battleship)

At this point I decided to do some calculations, as I was not at home with access to reference books I decided to use the NavWeaps site as source for the needed data on the weapons (and memory for numbers of barrels of each). The spreadsheet with the relevant calculations is shown below:

                                                                                                                                  

 Here we see that the total mass of ordnance potentially delivered per minute by the RN cruisers is substantially greater than that from GS (7663.2 kg/min as opposed to 5587.2 kg/min). Also the vanilla weight of broadsides does not favour GS by the alleged factor of two.

A word of caution is needed with respect to the rate of fire figures used, NavWeaps gives a range for those other than the German 11", I have chosen to use values towards the bottom of the range, if not the figure they quoted as achieved.

I would not claim this analysis proves the superiority of one side or the other, but does raise the question of the adequacy of the research behind the book.

*Maybe Harwood had consulted the shade of John Byng on the wisdom of caution?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Disappearing posts on Academia.edu grr...

I'm really a bit pissed at the moment. I was intending to post something (not naval or wargame related) on my academia.edu page only to find the mini-blog and its content  have disappeared. I hope this is only temporary (they seem to have lost some of my papers as well, I suspect that is not deliberate since there was nothing controversial in those, unlike the blog ;( If this is not sorted in the next few days that account will be deleted.

Something similar appears to have happened to my wordpress blog...grrr... I can't delete this account as its content already appears to have been purged. - maybe only on work computers, seems OK from home.

Just goes to show you cannot trust any third party on the internet to host your stuff. Not sure I can rely on blogger to not purge me so will have to look into some other solution - probably just taking all my material off of the internet and keeping it in big manuscript ledgers.

Irony?

Box of Matches, Purchased in Portsmouth

"England's Glory", made in Sweden ...

The Wikipedia page on HMS Devastation (and on that of England's Glory matches) claims that the ship depicted on England's Glory Match Boxes is Devastation, which appears to be the best fit for the image (the other possible candidate, other than Devastation's sister Thunderer, would be HMS Dreadnought of 1875 but that is not as good a fit).

It always aggravates/amuses/annoys me to read technical journals where claims are made that are not true. Not only not true but well known to be not true within the community concerned.

The latest example of ignorance of this sort that I have come accross (it dates from 2006, so not that recent, except to me) is in this article in  Undersea Warfare, The Official Magazine of the US Submarine Force (maybe it should be considered for publication of the week on Have I Got News For You). There it is asserted that the sinking of the Belgrano by Conqueror in 1982 was the first torpedo fired in anger against a warship since 1945. The problem with this is that Pakistan Navy Daphné-class submarine Hangor, on 9 December 1971, fired three torpedoes (probably French L5's) at the ships of the Indian Navy's 14th Frigate Squadron sinking the Khukri (a type 14 frigate).

The further significance of the Hangor/14th Frigate Squadron incident is that it is the first, and so far only, known use in anger of homing torpedoes post WW2.

Midway Article in Spring 2015 issue of Naval War College Review

There is an interesting paper on Nagumo's intelligence estimates at Midway by Antony Tully and Lu Yu and its impact on the battle. It can be found here: Midway Paper

Guerre de Course

Introduction

In a recent post on the History Stack Exchange a question was asked which may be paraphrased as

Why were cruisers (in the pre-missile age) used for anything other than commerce raiding.

I provided an answer there where I used the term Guerre de Course and added after its first use the parenthetical suggestion that the reader should Google the term. Now along comes someone with sufficient privilege to edit my post and removes my parenthetical remark and makes Guerre de Course itself into a link to the Wikipedia page on Commerce Raiding. What I take exception to is that if I wanted to provide a link I would have done so, Why did I not do so? Because I want to encourage readers to do at least some of the work themselves, and learn to do research, after all it is not difficult in the age of the interwebs. Well I am disinclined to remove the edit, but the affair has prompted me to write something anout the topic here, and if I like what I write perhaps to publish it elsewhere.

Definition and Etymology

I expect that most readers know that Guerre de Course is a French term meaning a naval war or campaign against merchant shipping or trade. Now Wikipedia and other sources rather than give a proper etymology of the expression just tell us that it is translated literally as  "war of race" or something equivalent and uninformative.

Now what I observe is that a better translation would be "war of the corsairs". Where corsair is a term meaning pirate or a pirate ship (often specifically a Barbary Pirate). This of course now explains the meaning of the term Guerre de Course = War of Piracy which is descriptive of the actual practice (with only a modicum of hyperbole as pre-20th Century it was often conducted with/by Privateers - you may note that on that link a privateer is also described as a corsair).

We might also note in passing that the word Course is derived from the Latin cursus which among its other meanings has run rather than chase. Which reminds me of the Byzantine warship type: Dromon (from Greek for running). While the ships used by the Barbary Pirates may not them selves have been descended from the Dromon at least the Latinate term to describe them may well be. Doing an image search however does indicate a possible evolutionary connection between the galleys used by the Barbary pirates and the dromon.

Reconstruction of an early 10thcentury Byzantine bireme dromon,
based on the Tactica of Emperor Leo VI the Wise.

Illustration of a galley running before the wind, found in The Story of the Barbary Corsairs' by Stanley Lane-Poole, published in 1890 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.

More to Follow ... ?

Portsmouth Naval Dockyard from the Spinnaker Tower

Portsmouth Naval Dockyard from the Spinnaker Tower, November 2014

It is difficult to identify everything in the picture (and I'm not sure I have all of the Type 45's in frame), But what I could identify by eye included 4 Type 45's, Ark Royal, Bristol, some Type 23's (don't recall the number, it may have been only one), and possibly some others (virtually impossible to see is a ship with a red hull and buff funnel between Bristol and one of the Type 45's, presumably Endurance).

In addition there is Warrior in the foreground, Victory without most of its' masts etc, the Mary Rose Museum in the middle ground, and the Type 45 Systems Integration Facility on top of Portsdown Hill in the far background.